This appears to have been the view of most of the heathen philosophers. Cicero: “Magna dii curant; parva negligunt.” “Even in kingdoms among men,” he says, “kings do not trouble themselves with insignificant affairs.” Fullerton, Conceptions of the Infinite, 9—“Plutarch thought there could not be an infinity of worlds,—Providence could not possibly take charge of so many. ‘Troublesome and boundless infinity’could be grasped by no consciousness.” The ancient Cretans made an image of Jove without ears, for they said: “It is a shame to believe that God would hear the talk of men.” So Jerome, the church Father, thought it absurd that God should know just how many gnats and cockroaches there were in the world. David Harum is wiser when he expresses the belief that there is nothing wholly bad or useless in the world: “A reasonable amount of fleas is good for a dog,—they keep him from broodin' on bein' a dog.” This has been paraphrased: “A reasonable number of beaux are good for a girl,—they keep her from brooding over her being a girl.”
In addition to the arguments above alluded to, we may urge against this theory that:
(a) General control over the course of nature and of history is impossible without control over the smallest particulars which affect the course of nature and of history. Incidents so slight as well-nigh to escape observation at the time of their occurrence are frequently found to determine the whole future of a human life, and through that life the fortunes of a whole empire and of a whole age.
“Nothing great has great beginnings.” “Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.” “Care for the chain is care for the links of the chain.”Instances in point are the sleeplessness of King Ahasuerus (Esther 6:1), and the seeming chance that led to the reading of the record of Mordecai's service and to the salvation of the Jews in Persia; the spider's web spun across the entrance to the cave in which Mohammed had taken refuge, which so deceived his pursuers that they passed on In a bootless chase, leaving to the world the religion and the empire of the Moslems; the preaching of Peter the Hermit, which occasioned the first Crusade; the chance shot of an archer, which pierced the right eye of Harold, the last of the purely English kings, gained the battle of Hastings for William the Conqueror, and secured the throne of England for the Normans; the flight of pigeons to the south-west, which changed the course of Columbus, hitherto directed towards Virginia, to the West Indies, and so prevented the dominion of Spain over North America; the storm that dispersed the Spanish Armada and saved England from the Papacy, and the storm that dispersed the French fleet gathered for the conquest of New England—the latter on a day of fasting and prayer appointed by the Puritans to avert the calamity; the settling of New England by the Puritans, rather than by French Jesuits; the order of Council restraining Cromwell and his friends from sailing to America; Major André's lack of self-possession in presence of his captors, which led him to ask an improper question instead of showing his passport, and which saved the American cause; the unusually early commencement of cold weather, which frustrated the plans of Napoleon and destroyed his army in Russia; the fatal shot at Fort Sumter, which precipitated the war of secession and resulted in the abolition of American slavery. Nature is linked to history; the breeze warps the course of the bullet; the worm perforates the plank of the ship. God must care for the least, or he cannot care for the greatest.
“Large doors swing on small hinges.” The barking of a dog determined F. W. Robertson to be a preacher rather than a soldier. Robert Browning, Mr. Sludge the Medium: “We find great things are made of little things, And little things go lessening till at last Comes God behind them.” E. G. Robinson: “We cannot suppose only a general outline to have been in the mind of God, while the filling-up is left to be done in some other way. The general includes the special.” Dr. Lloyd, one of the Oxford Professors, said to Pusey, “I wish you would learn something about those German critics.” “In the obedient spirit of those times,” writes Pusey, “I set myself at once to learn German, and I went to Göttingen, to study at once the language and the theology. My life turned on that hint of Dr. Lloyd's.”
Goldwin Smith: “Had a bullet entered the brain of Cromwell or of William III in his first battle, or had Gustavus not fallen at Lützen, the course of history apparently would have been changed. The course even of science would have been changed, if there had not been a Newton and a Darwin.” The annexation of Corsica to France [pg 430]gave to France a Napoleon, and to Europe a conqueror. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 101—“Had the monastery at Erfurt deputed another than young Luther on its errand to paganized Rome, or had Leo X sent a less scandalous agent than Tetzel on his business to Germany, the seeds of the Reformation might have fallen by the wayside where they had no deepness of earth, and the Western revolt of the human mind might have taken another date and another form.” See Appleton, Works, 1:149 sq.; Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, chap. I.
(b) The love of God which prompts a general care for the universe must also prompt a particular care for the smallest events which affect the happiness of his creatures. It belongs to love to regard nothing as trifling or beneath its notice which has to do with the interests of the object of its affection. Infinite love may therefore be expected to provide for all, even the minutest things in the creation. Without belief in this particular care, men cannot long believe in God's general care. Faith in a particular providence is indispensable to the very existence of practical religion; for men will not worship or recognize a God who has no direct relation to them.
Man's care for his own body involves care for the least important members of it. A lover's devotion is known by his interest in the minutest concerns of his beloved. So all our affairs are matters of interest to God. Pope's Essay on Man: “All nature is but art unknown to thee; All chance, direction which thou canst not see; All discord, harmony not understood; All partial evil, universal good.” If harvests may be labored for and lost without any agency of God; if rain or sun may act like fate, sweeping away the results of years, and God have no hand in it all; if wind and storm may wreck the ship and drown our dearest friends, and God not care for us or for our loss, then all possibility of general trust in God will disappear also.
God's care is shown in the least things as well as in the greatest. In Gethsemane Christ says: “Let these go their way: that the word might be fulfilled which he spake, Of those whom thou hast given me I lost not one” (John 18:8, 9). It is the same spirit as that of his intercessory prayer: “I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition” (John 17:12). Christ gives himself as a prisoner that his disciples may go free, even as he redeems us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). The dewdrop is moulded by the same law that rounds the planets into spheres. Gen. Grant said he had never but once sought a place for himself, and in that place he was a comparative failure; he had been an instrument in God's hand for the accomplishing of God's purposes, apart from any plan or thought or hope of his own.
Of his journey through the dark continent in search of David Livingston, Henry M. Stanley wrote in Scribner's Monthly for June, 1890: “Constrained at the darkest hour humbly to confess that without God's help I was helpless, I vowed a vow in the forest solitudes that I would confess his aid before men. Silence as of death was around me; it was midnight; I was weakened by illness, prostrated with fatigue, and wan with anxiety for my white and black companions, whose fate was a mystery. In this physical and mental distress I besought God to give me back my people. Nine hours later we were exulting with a rapturous joy. In full view of all was the crimson flag with the crescent, and beneath its waving folds was the long-lost rear column.... My own designs were frustrated constantly by unhappy circumstances. I endeavored to steer my course as direct as possible, but there was an unaccountable influence at the helm.... I have been conscious that the issues of every effort were in other hands.... Divinity seems to have hedged us while we journeyed, impelling us whither it would, effecting its own will, but constantly guiding and protecting us.” He refuses to believe that it is all the result of “luck”, and he closes with a doxology which we should expect from Livingston but not from him: “Thanks be to God, forever and ever!”